AllMovie

Instant life or death decisions, pushing way past the limit of one's abilities while on the brink of disaster, remaining standing and breathing against all odds, looking mortality straight in the face without flinching -- all these elements were thrillingly blended in the Discovery Channel documentary series I Shouldn't Be Alive. Each episode re-created a miraculous example of human survival, with the actual participants serving as eyewitness narrators. Thrust by fate or design into a potentially fatal situation or a danger-prone moral dilemma, these ordinary men and women had but a fraction of a second to determine their ultimate fate. At the end of each program, the viewer was allowed to wonder if he or she would have made the right choice under such demanding circumstances. A life-affirming exercise in "seeking the light" after descending into the pit of darkness, I Shouldn't Be Alive was put together by the same staff responsible for the popular 2003 documentary Touching the Void, and first aired on October 14, 2005.